How to prepare for pastoral ministry (4)

[BooneCtyBeek (Jeff Singletary)]

@jtbayly

And the question is whether some methods are better than others.

@jtbayly

but you cannot train true pastors via book learning

These are not in dispute.

@jtbayly

Surely you men aren’t suggesting that judgments can’t be made about institutions and their fruit. Refusal to do this is a constant problem. If reformed seminaries are doing a good job at this, why is the evidence overwhelmingly to the contrary?

I’ve not suggested that seminaries do a good job of training a pastor. It is an unrealistic expectation to think they can (see my post above) any more than Rose-Hulman can produce an engineer who is ready to hit a job running right after graduation. He knows mechanical engineering. How does this apply to HVAC? He’ll need on the job training and mentoring to be successful.

The thesis is ‘Westminster men cannot preach.’ What is meant by this? By what fruit is this being evaluated? What is the empirical evidence? You and I may have opinions, even strongly held opinions, but they don’t make things true.

@jtbayly

If your contention is that the state of the church today in the USA is the people’s fault and the pastors are all suffering servants

That is not my contention. Tim agrees (to paraphrase) there’s a lot of blame to spread around.

[FaithAlone (John M.)]

@jtbayly

Just like the time of the prophets I see a few, here and there, while a great many more are harming the sheep rather than being harmed by them.

Indeed, a common theme of American Christianity across many, many denominations in the recent past has been the flock acting as an orthodox brake on the heresies being promulgated by their seminary-trained pastors.

[zsmcdonald (Zachary McDonald)]

@jtbayly

Surely you men aren’t suggesting that judgments can’t be made about institutions and their fruit. Refusal to do this is a constant problem. If reformed seminaries are doing a good job at this, why is the evidence overwhelmingly to the contrary?

Certain reformed seminaries are doing a good job in certain things. But common sense tells us that they aren’t made to train pastors in pastoral ministry. In this way I almost appreciate seminaries that aren’t claiming to be “training pastors.” They are great at making concise theologians in the narrow sense of the term, but it’s not a suitable place for passing on pastoral wisdom. Pastors must be theologians, but why would anyone pay tens of thousands of dollars to leave their home church to receive that education in a whole different context when the internet can deliver nearly the same exact education via your pastor? Largely, I assume, it’s because we respect an individual theologian and want to learn from them. If you want to be a theologian and write detailed scholarly works then cool. If you want to be a pastor though…

I think we agree, I see bad fruit as well, but we can argue all day about it because it’s largely subjective - though I think Gary North makes a compelling case here, along with Pastor Tim’s story. I just think common sense gets the point across enough. Theologians should go the academic route, pastors should train in the local church and save their money for their children.

And, regarding the training of lawyers, businessmen, doctors, etc. North argues that those educational institutions adopted nearly the same problematic training strategy as the seminaries.

[MACJ (Cody Justice)]

@zsmcdonald

Gary North makes a compelling case here

Thanks for sharing that link. North makes some good comments. This gut-punch stuck out to me:

What churches have done is preposterous. They have hired theologians to train future
ministers. Theologians should train theologians; ministers should train ministers. This is so
obvious that only a theologian could fail to grasp it.

And this gets at the principle of imitation/emulation:

The apprenticeship system is God’s model. This is why the modern world is so hostile to apprenticeship. The devil’s system is certification by committee, not the student’s imitation of individually skilled performance. His organizational system is top-down and as impersonal as possible; God’s is bottom-up and as personal as possible. Satan’s system is based on the assumption of cosmic impersonalism (especially after Darwinism); God’s is based on the assumption of cosmic personalism: the absolute sovereignty of a trinitarian personal God.

As I’ve considered these things recently, the Lord’s words came to mind: A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher (Luke 6:40). This suggests two principles: (1) the heart and purpose of training is imitation, not information (2) this imitation has a limitation—you will only be what the teacher is. I see no way that this doesn’t upend the traditional seminary model.

[jtbayly (Joseph Bayly)]

@zsmcdonald

And, regarding the training of lawyers, businessmen, doctors, etc. North argues that those educational institutions adopted nearly the same problematic training strategy as the seminaries.

I haven’t read North, yet, but I think it would be harder to claim this about doctors. Do they require a lot of academic training? Absolutely. But given residency and other requirements are way more hands-on than a 1 year pastoral “internship,” it seems like a pretty big stretch to me.